AMD really needs to turn their driver strategy around.

I think they are doing a good job. :thumbup:

 

This type of crap is why I also jumped ship. I had been using AMD (and ATI) since the T-bird CPU and the Radeon 8500. Too many PR stunts, half truths, half baked drivers and outright bull**** is the reason I went to the other side (not to mention the wicked deal on the 980 for $435.00 US).

Sometimes you just get fed up. I did, and lost every ounce of faith in AMD as a result. They will have to come up with something phenomenal to regain this customer. And that something will have to undergo serious 3rd party testing to prove that it's not bull**** as well. Good luck AMD, you market share is only going down with every sneaky, ****ty move you try to make.

 

If I went with trust I wouldn't buy any pc product really. Nvidia, AMD and Intel all full of bs.

 

The hardcoded features that AMD release is something else. The VSR feature only allows downsampling from 1920x1080 and higher, so if you have a slightly lower resolution I don't think you're able to use it.
The new framelimiter has a 55-95 FPS range, like people never play games at 30 FPS or even 50 FPS? What about 144 FPS? No. Anywhere in between 55 or 95 FPS and that's final.
Not just features either but as mentioned here, with series of graphics cards. AMD are hardcoding limitations on older hardware just because they can.
I'm surprised they haven't done the same with DX12.

 

Just installed the modded driver (Win 7 64-bit).
Was using the modded 1040 W10 driver previously and I must say, even compared to that, this one is very good.

Perfectly stable and smooth all around (Dying Light, Rage, Ryse...) plus if I used W8.1 the difference would probably be greater even.

So yes AMD, I'm looking at you...

 

Still unsure if the Windows 10 branch will be merged with the Windows 7/8.1 drivers so it benefits from the overhead improvements too.
I guess Windows 7/8.1 will become obsolete in a lot of developers eyes now because Windows 10 is "free".

 

Well, probably not, me thinks.

Still, as W10 is a free upgrade to any (legit) W7/8 owner, that I think doesn't matter that much.
Plus I've understood you need WDDM 2.0 (=DX12) to fully benefit from the changes anyway.

 

WDDM 1.2 and 1.3 has benefited from the optimizations made in the Windows 10 branch. If you want DX12 there's not really much choice. Not too impressed with Windows 10 as an OS though. More changes in it than 7 to 8.

 

I'm not too hyped about W10 either. Still, if it really brings ANY performance improvements to GCN architecture, I'll gladly take it (if you can install Classic Shell

 

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2015/06/18/msi_r9_390x_gaming_8g_video_card_review/9#.VZgIzS5Vjrw
Just going by the [H] review on the 300 series. My take on what they said is both cards. They performed 100% the same when set to the same clocks

So what is this major speed benefits for the 300 series come from this driver? Just curious what i missed?

 

In CPU intensive scenarios. I don't think the Witcher 3 is CPU intensive.

 

They tested like 4 (or was it 3?) different games, and all scores were the same.:wanker:

 

Near 8 FPS average increase. 8 FPS less minimum too which is important.

 

Ok im guessing you skimmed the article. That part was using the 300 series higher clocks and memory clocks

Here is one from the clock per clock part:

 

Yeah I've been through this before with Pr. Regarding holding back good drivers for 300 series to make them look better. I don't want to get into it again

 

Yea thats fine. I was just going by what the team at HardOCP found out on there own

 

I looked at that review so much I confused myself. You're right. The last test apples-to-apples shows with the same clocks they run exactly the same. The image I showed was different clocks yes? Yes I skimmed it

 

I did some driver comparison testing on a budget build with an Athlon 750K@4GHz and a PCS+ R9 270X. 15.15 drivers and 1040 show a systematic improvement, but it varies from game to game.

The most significant gains are to be had when the CPU is underutilized, and there no advanced (high AA, high teselation, TressFX,...) GFX options enabled. That way, the driver optimization is most visible. By reducing the processing time of the driver (or by enabling better threading), the extra CPU cycles can be put to use to run the game engine more frequently.

However, almost no gains can be had if you are very limited by CPU, GPU or a bad game engine.

I personally think that the next official AMD driver (Sigma, Psi, Omicron,...?) will incorporate a lot of the features we saw in the test drivers, for all qualifying chips. That was the strategy outlined in the Omega announcement last year: Have two big releases in a year with various new functionalities added, and beta drivers with game specific fixes. They need to have a nice list of big features to get media exposure.

 

I have 290 crossfire and play witcher 3, bf 4 and hardline, h1z1, cod:aw, gta v, projectcar cars...what is the best driver or the for ? There is just so much crap out there that i don't know what to do. Also, why are people flashing 390x bios on 290x?

 

I'd use 1023.7 personally.

I don't know why people flash the 390x BIOS to the 290x.